[dramatic music plays]
[Graff] There was no higher mission,
no more important hunt in the world
than finding Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11.
[Bush] I want justice.
And, uh, there's an old poster out west, as I recall,
that said "Wanted. Dead or alive."
It was a hunt that the US expended millions
if not tens of millions of dollars in year after year,
with a literal cast of thousands of US military intelligence analysts,
intelligence officers.
He was the number one target, the most hunted man in the world.
[artillery fire, explosions]
And year after year, the US had no sign of him at all.
9/11 was the single most catastrophic event,
I would argue, in our nation’s history since the Civil War.
Thousands of Americans were killed.
Iconic buildings, like the World Trade Center,
reduced to rubble.
Osama bin Laden was the personification of the enemy.
He was the perpetrator,
he was the orchestrator of that catastrophic attack.
That brought a lot of urgency to the task of getting bin Laden
so that he couldn’t orchestrate something, you know, along the lines of another 9/11.
[Bush] I know full well that bin Laden and his cronies
would like to harm America again.
Bin Laden and his cronies would like to harm our allies.
How do I know that? I receive intelligence reports
on a daily basis that indicates that that's his desire.
[man] They have blood on their hands,
from September 11th and from other acts against America,
in Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen.
We must identify them, we must find them,
and we must seize them.
[Rasmussen] The CIA comes to the White House
around Labor Day in 2010,
and informs the president that there is a compound of interest.
A place in Pakistan that they suspect might potentially be a location
where bin Laden could be living and holed up.
US intelligence managed to locate someone
that they believed had served as a courier for al-Qaeda
and a courier for bin Laden in the years after 9/11.
The US intelligence managed to begin to track him across Pakistan.
Operating in Pakistan was enormously dangerous,
enormously complicated,
but had long been the center of the hunt for the leadership of al-Qaeda.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other leaders
were actually captured in Pakistan.
They tracked a white SUV that the courier was driving
to this unique compound in a town called Abbottabad,
a resort community filled with Pakistan’s military academy,
sort of the West Point of Pakistan.
[Rasmussen] This was a circumstantial case, at best,
in these early phases.
There was a single individual
who was routinely seen pacing around the courtyard,
seemingly as if trying to gain exercise
within the confines of a small, um, limited space.
This was a person who had the kind of physical stature
that would approximate what we knew Osama bin Laden to have.
[Graff] The best the US intelligence was able to estimate,
was that there was a 50/50 shot that bin Laden was inside.
[Rasmussen] As CIA presented the intelligence case,
early on, President Obama signaled…
"If this is going to be a thing…
I’m going to want options."
One was the idea of a raid involving US personnel…
to insert an assault force
of US Navy Seals onto the compound in Abbottabad.
To have aviation assets, in this case helicopters,
bring the assault force to the compound, land on the compound,
carry out a sweep of the compound,
identify occupants of the compound,
find Osama bin Laden if he’s there, capture him if he’s there.
If resistance is encountered,
you know, engage in whatever necessary defensive measures are needed to…
to keep our operators safe, and then to depart the compound.
That’s it in its most simplistic form.
[Graff] This was a type of operation that US forces were quite familiar with,
but the fact that they had to carry it out inside of Pakistan,
the sovereign nation where the US was not supposed to be,
added an immense level of complexity to this.
There was always this enormous frustration also with Pakistan.
There was no question but that there were sanctuaries in Pakistan.
[Whitlock] Pakistan was playing a double game,
and the United States was really slow to pick up on it.
They rounded up a lot of al-Qaeda people in their cities.
But at the same time, they're giving support to the Taliban
and other insurgents.
[Graff] There was a very real fear in the US government
that aspects or corners of Pakistani intelligence
might well have been supporting or protecting bin Laden
in the years after 9/11.
Pakistan is also a nuclear country.
This was an operation that could have gone very wrong
in a lot of different ways,
with a lot of very serious geopolitical consequences.
[Rasmussen] On the day of the operation,
the people involved in the decision-making process
that were Washington-based gathered in the White House Situation Room.
[Graff] The beginnings of the raid go like clockwork.
The helicopter flight into Pakistan goes undetected.
They arrive right on schedule at the compound.
And then in just the first few seconds over the compound,
trouble hits.
[Petraeus] The helicopter settled more than the pilot thought it would,
and it essentially crash-landed on the roof of a building in the compound.
And it was pretty clear that it wasn’t gonna fly out of there.
The question now is, "What do you do about that helicopter,
uh, and how do you get those forces out that came in on it?"
[Graff] Back in Washington, everyone's heart stops.
Everyone is suddenly fearful that they might be watching a massacre,
or even the capture of US Navy Seals inside an allied nation.
[Rasmussen] All of these questions are buzzing around people’s minds…
and yet it’s also very quickly clear from Vice Admiral McRaven,
that the operation is proceeding.
It has not derailed in any sense, the operation itself.
For the period of time it takes the assault force
to work their way room by room,
there’s still uncertainty about whether bin Laden is actually there.
[Graff] Then the radio call back to Washington,
back to Afghanistan…
"For God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo."
[dramatic music intensifies]
It was the code word for finding bin Laden.
The word comes back from the Navy Seals in Abbottabad,
"Osama bin Laden killed in action."
That word goes back to Washington, and they realize for the first time
that they think that they have actually gotten bin Laden.
In the end, the US Navy Seals were on the ground in Abbottabad
for about 40 minutes.
There had actually been a set of backup helicopters
staged nearby already.
And so they destroy the crashed helicopter.
And they helicoptered out
with all the intelligence that they could carry,
and the man that they believed was Osama bin Laden
in a body bag on the floor of the helicopter.
Now the question is, "How can you verify that this really is Osama bin Laden?"
[Graff] They had CIA resources who knew bin Laden,
who had been chasing bin Laden for some time,
who positively ID’d the body.
They had one US Navy Seal lie down next to bin Laden’s body
to determine his height.
His face had been too damaged by gunfire
for a positive facial ID,
but they were able, they believed, to identify him off of his ears.
[dramatic music plays]
[Obama] Good evening.
Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world…
that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden,
the leader of al-Qaeda.
[crowd] ♪ O'er the land of the free ♪
-[cheering] -♪ And the home of the brave ♪
[Rasmussen] When I step out onto West Executive Avenue,
I look to my right up to Pennsylvania Avenue…
[crowd, chanting] USA! USA! USA!
…and it’s filled with hundreds if not thousands of people,
out in the streets cheering, running around, hugging,
-congratulating each other… -[cheering]
…all who must have heard the news within the last half hour to 45 minutes.
So, literally, spontaneously showing up on the streets of Washington
to express their emotions about this.
And I was blown away by that.
[crowd] ♪ God bless America ♪
[crowd] …liberty and justice for all!
[Rasmussen] It said something pretty profound
about what this moment must have meant to so many Americans.
This job was him. This was him.
-Good job, national security team. -Sir.
Thank you. Yeah. Proud of you.
-Your guys did a great job. -They did.
[Petraeus] It was an extraordinary evening.
And at the end of it, I remember shaking the hand of the colonel,
and then we just went on about business.
You know, there was no high five or celebration.
It was a recognition that this is very significant,
but there's 12 operations ongoing in Afghanistan tonight,
a number of which were, in many different respects,
more challenging, more risky than the one that had just been conducted.
[Graff] The death of bin Laden, in many ways,
marked the end of al-Qaeda,
but not the end of the threat that al-Qaeda had unleashed on the world.
[dramatic music plays]
The war in Afghanistan,
the instability in Iraq has now, actually in many ways,
gone on longer after the death of bin Laden
than it had before bin Laden was killed.
[dramatic music plays]
[man] My law school, George Mason University Law School,
is located just a couple of miles from the Pentagon.
Like most Americans, of course, I was shocked, dismayed, angered.
All those emotions that people still feel to this day.
I remember feeling that I should do something about this,
and I should be part of this fight.
I read an article in The Washington Post,
I think it was my third year in college,
about the impact that judge advocates had
during the Nuremberg proceedings after World War II,
in terms of advancing the rule of law, and also advancing the principles
that currently are being applied around the world, in theory, at least,
as it relates to fair trial guarantees for criminal defendants,
and thought that's an interesting career path.
When I returned from Iraq after a surge deployment,
I spent two years in Germany as a military public defender,
representing soldiers before courts martial.
I remember I was in a field, walking my dog at the time,
and I had a call from the placement office saying,
“Jason, we think we got a great assignment for you."
"How about Guantanamo Bay?"
This is 2011.
We're about ten years removed from 9/11.
And in the ensuing period, a lot had come out about the torture memos…
about some of the problems associated
with an overly aggressive US stance for the war on terror.
A lot of US civil liberties concerns.
Later I got a call that I would be working as a support counsel
for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of 9/11.
The allegations against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
are that he planned, orchestrated, and coordinated the events of 9/11,
and that he was the individual who had planned it all.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi in 2003 by Pakistani forces.
And then was detained by the CIA
in various overseas locations outside of the United States,
often called "Black Sites,"
and subjected to, what some might call, enhanced interrogation techniques.
What others might call torture.
He was subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation.
Up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation is alleged.
According to the declassified records, 183 sessions of the waterboard.
He ended up in Guantanamo Bay.
[interviewer] What was your reaction to hearing
that you would essentially be defending him?
[Wright] In this particular case, of course,
fighting for the rights of detainees in Guantanamo Bay
is not a politically convenient topic for anyone to pursue.
But it's not about the client.
It's about defending rights for everyone at the end of the day.
[reporter] Now, the White House wants Congress to spell out the limits
of how terrorist suspects can be interrogated and then prosecuted
under proposed military commissions.
[interviewer] Why not try these detainees in the United States?
We have a strong and robust criminal justice system.
I think that’s a fair question to ask.
And we have tried some certain terrorists in the United States.
A key example is Zacarias Moussaoui.
[reporter] Zacarias Moussaoui is serving a life sentence
after being convicted in federal court, in the nation's first 9/11 trial.
[Gonzales] Part of the concern that we have is that not every detainee
at Guantanamo is gonna represent themselves and plead guilty.
Concerns are that they would use the trial as a platform
to condemn the United States,
and to praise the efforts of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups,
because it would be a propaganda opportunity
for these individuals.
We also worried about the safety, quite frankly.
There would be serious concerns about attacks by terrorist groups
during that trial.
[Greenberg] The problem with the Guantanamo detainees
was that they were tortured.
And that raised a whole bunch of questions,
the first of which being, what would that do if a jury heard that?
The second being that confessions were given under torture
and what would that mean for the confession itself?
And the defense would be able to argue very strongly
against that even being introduced.
[woman] CCR, Center for Constitutional Rights, along with co-counsel,
filed a habeas case in the first weeks after 9/11, in February of 2002,
challenging the government’s position that detainees shouldn't have the right
to know why they were being held,
or have any ability to challenge their detention.
And that case, ultimately, worked its way up to the Supreme Court.
The US Supreme Court heard arguments today,
in a case that goes to the heart of the war on terror.
The detention of more than 600 terrorist suspects
on the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In effect, the justices were reviewing the legality of those detentions.
[Paradis] In 2006, the court says that the military commissions are unlawful
because they violate international law.
That detainees in the War on Terrorism are protected by the Geneva Conventions.
[applause]
At the end of 2006, the Military Commissions Act was passed
to legalize all the things that the Supreme Court said were illegal
only a few months before.
One was a stripping of habeas corpus.
So it took away the rights of all Guantanamo detainees
to challenge the legality of even their detention, and their treatment.
Habeas corpus is the right to go to court
to say that what's being done to you is illegal. And that's all it is.
It's nothing more than the opportunity to have your day in court.
So as a lawyer, to deny habeas corpus is in essence to deny the law.
It's to make Guantanamo what people actually said it was:
a legal equivalent of outer space.
When Barack Obama took office in 2009,
he issued an executive order to halt all military commission proceedings,
these special trials in Guantanamo,
and to close Guantanamo within a year.
A lot of the Guantanamo issues entered this multi-year period of limbo,
where the Obama administration kind of just tried to figure out
what it was going to do.
[Obama] With the Afghan war ending, this needs to be the year
Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers
and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Because we counter terrorism,
not just through intelligence and military actions,
but by remaining true to our constitutional ideals.
I think the Obama administration itself
simply lost the incentive to do anything about it.
They had other political priorities.
[Wright] Everyone, at the end of the day, is entitled to a fair trial.
And that's what I've been asked to do,
to defend my client to the best of my ability.
By any measure, if these techniques were applied on a US person, a US citizen,
on any criminal defendant in a US process…
it would shock the conscience.
Growing up in Virginia and going to school,
and learning the Constitution and Bill of Rights, you want to believe
that our leaders would pass a law that would be fair to anyone.
For anyone who's taken a look at the Military Commissions Act of 2006,
passed by the Bush Administration, and the Military Commissions Act of 2009,
which was passed by President Obama,
you will see that this whole system has been set up for failure from day one.
There really was this almost architecture put in place that really made it difficult
to do your job as a defense counsel.
Truly difficult.
It became apparent that the policy here of the US government is not really
to pursue a fair trial for anyone.
It's essentially to make sure that the attorneys do just good enough of a job
that this process looks legitimate.
But let's make sure they don't do too good of a job.
This military commission process has been designed
to ensure that no information
about the treatment that these men suffered from,
that it never reaches the light of day.
It's about hiding war crimes.
And so I said no.
It's unethical for me to do this.
I resigned from from the US Army as an active duty military officer.
[interviewer] From the perspective of many people,
you know, it doesn’t get worse than Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
Right? This horrific attack on the World Trade Center…
and on the Pentagon.
So how is defending this guy worth stepping away from your position?
Essentially leaving the Army.
Yeah. I understand that.
I understand that.
I stepped away from active duty in the Army.
But, in a sense, I wasn’t stepping away from anything.
It's really standing up for something is the way that I think… I see it,
and what I had to do.
There's a great quote in a book written by Anton Myrer.
“If given the choice between being a good soldier
and a good human being…
be a good human being."
[interviewer] When you look at a figure like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
how is it that that case still is not resolved?
I think the fact that we have individuals in custody today for close to 20 years…
without resolution…
some people might view that as a criticism of the military commission process.
To me, it speaks to the difficulties of dealing with these kinds of actors,
who continue to pose a threat to the safety of our country.
And I think it’s reflected by the fact
that not just President Bush has wrestled with these issues,
but I think President Obama, President Trump,
I think President Biden’s gonna have to wrestle with these issues.
How do we come to a conclusion?
[Fallon] This is what's happening now, because we tortured.
Twenty years past September 11th, and we're still trying to figure out
what to do with people who attacked us.
[Wright] I was traveling once, several years ago,
and I met with a foreign journalist who had been a detainee briefly.
He said something that has always stayed with me about Guantanamo…
which is that Guantanamo is not a place.
It's a concept.
And it's a concept about…
who we want to be as Americans, in my opinion.
Because America's a concept too.
And we wanna fight for that concept.
[dramatic music plays]
Thanks to our extraordinary men and women in uniform,
our civilian personnel, and our many coalition partners,
we are meeting our goals.
As a result, starting next month,
we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan
by the end of this year,
and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer.
[Allen] In my conversations with the president…
his instructions to me as I headed towards Afghanistan
and ultimately to become the commander,
were to begin the process of pivoting the war,
and put it in the hands of the Afghans…
ultimately for them to bear the vast majority of the requirement
for the security of the country.
[gunfire]
[Obama] Our mission will change from combat to support.
By 2014, this process of transition will be complete.
And the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.
We had to begin to, as we say, "shut down the theater."
And the day I took command, I asked the question,
"How many facilities do we have in Afghanistan?"
If you count battle positions, combat outposts,
forward operating bases, and bases across Afghanistan in the summer of 2011,
there were over 800 of these facilities in some form or another,
some very small battle positions, some very large.
Tens of thousands of coalition forces…
with fighter and transport aircraft operating off of major runways
and airfields across multiple locations around the country.
We had to shut these down.
And that was an enormous undertaking.
They permitted me, ultimately, to bring in several thousand troops
that did nothing but demilitarize bases, tear down the structures,
and return the ground to what it looked like before,
so that we would never have the image of Taliban
and the black Taliban flag flying over an American base.
[somber music plays]
[reporter] This is the scene, March last year,
after a deadly attack on US troops in Afghanistan's Wardak province.
Another insider attack,
or "green-on-blue attack" as they're called.
[all shouting commands]
[Allen] Early in 2012, there surfaced on social media
a video of some American troops urinating on Afghan dead, Taliban dead.
And first of all that’s not who we are. We don't do that sort of thing.
But in this case, here it is, a video,
and some pretty obscene commentaries also occurring
while the urination's going on.
This enraged everyone in Afghanistan.
It enraged the Afghan government.
It enraged the Afghan military authorities.
It enraged me.
Within a week, an Afghan soldier, outraged over this,
attacked his French advisers
and killed four, tragically, right on the spot.
A fifth died later, wounded a number of the French.
[Anderson] Initially, when the Brits and Americans
were training the Afghan National Security Forces, they would share bases.
They would wake up, eat breakfast, exercise, eat dinner together.
And there were real bonds and strong relationships formed that way.
But the Taliban quickly realized this would be a very easy way
to, you know, kill coalition forces…
and stop the training effort.
From 2008, 2009 onwards,
it became more and more common for you to hear about in the middle of the night,
an Afghan National Army soldier waking up
and shooting four or five British or American soldiers.
There were some cases where someone was offended by something
he’d been ordered to do, or offended because he’d been disciplined.
They became so common and so bad,
that the two forces had to be completely separated.
[Allen] Our advisers or our troops are attacked and murdered
by the very individuals that we are seeking to prepare
to defend themselves.
This was something which had the potential
of really eroding the cohesion and the coherence
of the coalition from inside out.
We have never completely ended this.
[Petraeus] Let me tell you, the Afghans can and will fight.
They have definitely been fighting and dying for their country.
[speaking indistinctly]
If you look at the sheer casualties that they have sustained,
there have been periods of time
when we've worried that those casualties could be so great
that they literally couldn’t be replaced over time.
They have taken enormous casualties,
and at a time when we are taking relatively few,
any one of which is a tragedy.
But they are taking many.
And it has been that way for many years.
I don't think you can ever accuse Afghans of not being fighters.
[gunshots]
[Chandrasekaran] As US troops started to come home,
and our footprint there reduced as the surge was ending,
US commanders once again turned to air strikes,
and in this case, many of them launched by unmanned aerial drones,
to beat back Taliban strongholds.
The change in this tactic meant that there was a significant uptick
in civilian casualties.
And the consequence of that
is that it simply turns more people against US and Afghan forces,
and sends them into the arms of the Taliban.
[Shamsi] The use of lethal drones and other kinds of air strikes
really took off in 2009,
and became even more expansive
and entrenched under the Obama presidency.
[reporter] Mr. Obama has deployed drones more aggressively than President Bush.
For that, the president offered no apologies.
Dozens of highly-skilled al-Qaeda commanders, trainers,
bomb makers, and operatives have been taken off the battlefield.
[reporter] Pakistani officials say this year,
US drones hit more than 100 alleged militant targets
in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border.
[reporter 2] Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born al-Qaeda operative
who's been living in Yemen,
homeland security officials call him the most significant threat
to US homeland security, has been killed.
[reporter 3] Intelligence for months tracked Awlaki near his hideout in Yemen.
Early Friday, a CIA drone found its target.
[Shamsi] Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by American drone strikes.
[Maguire] Anwar al-Awlaki was the imam out in San Diego
during the time that the hijackers,
al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, resided in San Diego.
I believe that they were seen in his company on an occasion or two.
Awlaki became known after 9/11.
He became a very radical preacher.
[Shamsi] The government was claiming the authority to kill an American citizen
without due process,
without testing in court whether the decision to kill was legal,
factually supported,
whether some other means, short of killing, could have been used.
There has been virtually no grappling
with what it means that we have a program of extrajudicial killing,
killing terrorism suspects without any kind of judicial oversight.
[woman] A lot of people will say that the drone strikes were very useful.
They were able to get target "A, B, and C,"
but my argument always was that when they took three targets out,
they created 3,300 more targets.
Because the drone strikes could not be fair,
the drone strikes had collateral damage which ran into thousands.
I was shocked when we said,
“Okay, what do you consider to be a legitimate target?”
And, you know, eventually, if you take out all the fluff of it,
it was any male who was over a certain age
and under a certain age, who was a good target.
When you kill people with impunity, you create many, many more targets.
[Bush] With weapons like the predator drone in our arsenal,
our troops can conduct precision strikes on terrorists in hard-to-reach areas,
while sparing innocent life.
[Obama] Simply put, these strikes have saved lives.
Moreover, America's actions are legal.
We were attacked on 9/11.
Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force.
[man 1] …her engagement party. It was an engagement party.
[man 2 speaks indistinctly]
[man 1] What was the date of the engagement party on this?
Is this the official document?
[dramatic music plays]
[young man, in Pashto] Whenever I go back to my village,
it doesn’t feel the same, it feels like some other village.
I had a lot of friends in the village.
I’ve seen several people getting amputations because of the bombing.
Their bodies would be covered with blood
and they have no hands nor feet,
and their skin would stretch out because of the fire.
And it would wave as if some cloth was hanging from the arm.
I will not forget this suffering, even if I live 100 years.
We will take our revenge, God willing.
[Malik Jalaluddin] You see how their mind is full of hatred now.
You create the terrorists.
You forced all these innocent people to become a terrorist
because it was your policy to kill our children.
They say, "That if death is our only fate, we would rather die fighting back."
They join the Taliban.
[dramatic music plays]
[reporter] Do you believe that American boots
should stay on the ground in Afghanistan to stabilize a situation.
[Trump] I wouldn't totally disagree with it,
except at some point, are they gonna be there for the next 200 years?
At some point, what's going on? It's gonna be a long time.
We made a terrible mistake getting involved there in the first place.
We had real brilliant thinkers that didn't know what the hell they were doing.
And it's a mess.
It's a mess.
Afghanistan is a total and complete disaster.
Why isn't Russia there?
Why isn't India there?
Why isn't Pakistan there?
Why are we there, and we're 6,000 miles away?
[Filkins] Trump made it absolutely clear, publicly and privately,
he wanted to get out.
[Trump] The American people are weary of war without victory.
Nowhere is this more evident than with the war in Afghanistan.
[Filkins] I spoke to a lot of the American diplomats,
and they made it clear to me that Trump’s attitude was,
he didn’t even care.
[Trump] If I wanted to win that war,
Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth, it would be gone.
It would be over, literally, in ten days.
Not only did he wanna get out, but he said, "Look, to hell with the Afghans."
"Fuck the Afghans," is what he said.
"They’re never gonna stop fighting."
"There’s no hope for those guys. We’re gone."
The Taliban was listening to that, and they heard that.
That was music to their ears.
[man, in Pashto] Mr. Trump said the Taliban are strong people
and we are strong people too.
Strong people must shake hands with strong people,
and fly over large spaces together.
[Filkins] They fell in love with Trump.
I mean, they really thought, "He's our guy in the White House."
[woman] No. You can forget about it. No problem.
Yeah, yeah. Come on.
[journalist] Good. How are you, sir?
[camera shutters clicking]
[Ahmad Zia Massoud] For me, the question is how a major democracy in the world,
like the United States of America,
talks to a terrorist group that has killed 5,000 of its soldiers,
about Afghanistan's political issues.
This was really a surprise to me.
[reporter] After 18 months of talks and nearly two decades of war,
the US and the Afghan Taliban have just signed a long-awaited deal,
aimed at paving the way to peace and the departure of foreign troops.
[applause]
[Filkins] Trump made a deal with the Taliban
essentially to pull out all American forces by May 1st, 2021.
[reporter] The Afghan government has freed nearly 5,000 Taliban prisoners,
and agreed, in August, to release more.
[Filkins] The deal was, basically, between the Americans and the Taliban,
and the Afghan government's cut out of it.
Basically, the Taliban agreed not to attack American forces,
but they didn't agree not to attack the Afghan government.
So what did they do?
They undertook an assassination campaign.
[siren wailing]
[reporter] Violence and bloodshed are gripping parts of Afghanistan,
threatening to upend peace talks
and derail future negotiations, aimed at ending America's longest war.
[Filkins] They very aggressively,
but very precisely targeted kind of the heart of Afghan civil society.
What basically, people would call the 2001 generation.
It was the women.
It was educators, teachers, professors.
[sobbing]
[mournful chatter]
[man wailing]
[Filkins] My God, they killed so many newspaper reporters, so many journalists.
People that-- Kinda the beating heart of Afghan democracy.
And they went after those people, kinda one by one.
And that was really scary.
[ominous music plays]
[man] We signed an agreement with the Taliban to sit with other Afghans,
including the government, to negotiate a roadmap for a political settlement,
and to agree to a comprehensive, permanent cease-fire.
And we are now witness
to Afghans sitting across the table from each other.
[no audible dialogue]
[Filkins] Imagine the negotiating table.
On one hand, you’ve got these unreconstructed Taliban leaders,
who for the last many, many years, almost a decade,
have been in Guantanamo in prison.
[man, in Pashto] The people, who were killing us yesterday,
are treating us friendly today, and are having chats with us.
They were arrogant when it came to their resources and technology.
[Filkins] They were very, very confident. I mean, really arrogant.
They said to the Afghan negotiators, like,
"Look, it’s gonna take us longer to make a peace deal with you
than it would be for us to just walk in and take Kabul."
They were really, really cocky.
[Shinwari] Militarily, the Americans have used a variety of strategies
and military equipment in Afghanistan.
But they failed at every step.
They did not achieve the success they had hoped for.
[Filkins] That's one side.
On the other hand, sitting across the table,
is the representative of the Afghan government.
Fawzia Koofi is really an amazing woman.
And she kinda personifies all the changes
that have overtaken Afghanistan in the last 20 years.
During her time in Parliament, and also since then,
she's really one of the big leaders
in the big push for women’s rights in that country.
The really stunning fact about Fawzia Koofi,
was right before the peace talks started…
someone tried to kill her.
[Koofi] We were supposed to come on Sunday.
This happened on a Friday.
There was this car who blocked our road.
And all of a sudden, somebody from the car is shooting.
After a few seconds, then you start realizing that you’re shot.
So then bleeding started,
and I could not move my hand.
So the bullet was hit here…
here…
and then all the way it went here, fracture here, and got stuck here.
So they removed it from here.
My daughter kept me awake by saying that, "Don't close your eyes."
Because after a lot of blood loss, I could go out of conscious.
And she kept me awake.
This was absolutely related to the peace talks,
because they knew that I’m going to be here.
Probably they were afraid of my voice.
This indicates the extent of the violence and war in Afghanistan.
And this indicates the importance of the process,
the peace process, to stop this bloodshed.
Like many other Afghan women,
I have witnessed Taliban whipping women on the street
for not wearing proper hijab or burka…
for going to see a doctor without a male companion.
Afghanistan is one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman.
How much more shall we compromise for the cost of peace?
[Filkins] President Biden decided we're leaving.
[Biden] We'll not conduct a hasty rush to the exit.
We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely.
And we will do it in full coordination with our allies and partners,
who now have more forces in Afghanistan than we do.
[Filkins] We’re not leaving by May 1st, but we will be out before September 11th,
which would be the 20th anniversary.
No conditions.
Um…
The Taliban doesn’t have to do A, B, C, D, or E.
We’re gone.
I went to Kabul in December 2020.
I saw President Ghani.
They felt abandoned.
They felt like, "Look. We love the Americans."
"We have elections here."
"We’re a functioning democracy in the middle of Asia."
"We believe in what you believe."
What I felt when I was there was fear.
I mean, it was like, "Oh my God, the Americans are leaving…
the Taliban are here, they are among us, and they’re coming after us."
And, you know, as long as it stays off the TV screens…
the world’s not gonna care.
[dramatic music plays]
[Biden] The United States did what we went to do in Afghanistan:
to get the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11…
and to deliver justice to Osama bin Laden…
and to degrade the terrorist threat to keep Afghanistan from becoming a base
from which attacks could be continued against the United States.
We achieved those objectives. That’s why we went.
We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build.
And it’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone
to decide their future, and how they want to run their country.
[reporter 1] The Taliban is rapidly taking over towns and districts.
[reporter 2] The Taliban said Friday, it had seized control of 85% of Afghanistan,
with fighters tightening their grip on strategic areas.
[Biden] Let me ask those who want us to stay:
How many more?
How many thousands more of America’s daughters and sons
are you willing to risk?
How long would you have them stay?
[reporter] US defense officials say
the last remaining American and NATO troops
have left the Bagram military air base in Afghanistan,
and handed it over to Afghan forces.
[McMaster] I'd just like to say, where are the humanitarians?
Why aren’t the humanitarians up in arms
about this disengagement from Afghanistan?
A disengagement that is already causing tremendous suffering.
That already, after the US penned the agreement with the Taliban,
we saw an attack on a maternity hospital,
in which the Taliban killed infants and expectant mothers.
Where we saw attacks in marketplaces that killed scores of Afghans.
We saw an attack on the American University in Kabul,
where they callously gunned down young people, including women,
who wanted to strengthen their country and build a better future
for generations of Afghans to come.
So I would just like to ask, where's the outrage?
Where are the humanitarians,
and why aren’t they concerned about us empowering
this terrorist organization,
this organization that has a brutal and murderous agenda,
on our way out of Afghanistan?
[Massoud] The moment the Americans leave Afghanistan and their forces are not here…
international terrorism will come back.
And all that investment that has been made in Afghanistan
over the last 19 years, will all be gone.
[leader shouting directives]
[soldier 1, in Pashto] The only thing that exists
is that the Taliban believe they have won this war,
the United States is escaping…
and they should be handed the keys to the door of this country…
so they can come and establish their own Emirate.
[soldier 2] Even if the Americans withrdraw their forces, we are prepared…
to fulfill our duties.
We'll be standing to defend our country as long as there's blood in our bodies.
We're not gonna surrender our country to the Taliban.
[soldier, in English] This is our fight. This is my country. This is my people.
This is my army.
Remember this face.
This is not the old Afghanistan.
This is the new generation.
This is the new people, the new young generation…
and the new Army.
[soldier 3, in Pashto] In the beginning, when I joined the army,
it was because of helplessness. But right now, our situation is better.
We've joined the army to defend our home, as there are too many miseries.
We need to defend our country.
The Taliban logic and reason is that the government of Afghanistan
is the outcome of the occupation of Afghanistan.
When the Americans leave,
the outcome of their occupation must be destroyed too,
and establish a new government
that is acceptable for all the people of Afghanistan.
[woman] My message to the bloodsucker Taliban
is that I have lost one of my children in the army
on the path of defending the country
and I will never stop supporting the Afghan National Army.
I will raise my remaining children and will present them to the ANA,
so they fight against the oppressor and bloodsucker enemies of the country,
and break their jaws.
[Shinwari] I assure you that we definitely want good relations
with the Americans and NATO.
In the agreement signed between the Taliban and the Americans,
you will find that one huge thing the Taliban gave up on
was relations with al-Qaeda and other groups.
This was the greatest thing to give up on.
Taliban gave up on these relations only for the negotiations to succeed,
and they said that we no longer maintain relations with al-Qaeda and other groups.
[soldier 4] Now that the Americans have made the decision
of withdrawing their forces after 20 years,
they have trained us professionally, and no problems will be created.
We are ready to defend our country ourselves.
[dramatic music plays]
[Lee] September 11th changed the world.
Our country is in a state of mourning.
Some of us must say, let's step back for a moment.
Let's just pause, just for a minute,
and think through the implications of our actions today…
so that this does not spiral out of control.
The Authorization to Use Military Force,
it’s been used over 41 times…
in about 19 countries…
not related at all to 9/11.
It’s also been used for domestic spying in the United States.
It’s been used in Somalia, Yemen, you name it.
It’s been used all over the world as the basis to use force,
and to bomb and engage in military operations.
That is unconstitutional.
It sets the stage for perpetual war.
[Gonzales] I never envisioned that, still today,
that Authorization to Use Military Force is still relied upon,
or at least cited by administrations
to use force around the nation against terrorist groups.
We never would've envisioned that.
Our thinking was that we’re gonna go after al-Qaeda.
And once we do that, then our job is done.
And once we’re confident that we’ve eliminated Afghanistan
as a safe haven, that that would be the end of the reliance upon
the Authorization to Use Military Force.
It was meant to go after al-Qaeda and those responsible for 9/11.
But it’s still operative today.
At some point it’s gotta end.
[dramatic music plays]
[Graff] 9/11, in many ways, is as clear a dividing line as we have
between the 20th century and the 21st.
It is, in many ways, the start of our modern history.
The biggest thing that 9/11 did, was it made America afraid.
[reporter] Today it's anthrax, tomorrow it's some other threat.
What is it? Where will it stop?
[Graff] We see that in the architecture of the buildings
and the public spaces that we spend our lives in.
It affected our trust in institutions…
the failures of the US government in the lead-up to 9/11.
My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources,
solid sources.
[Graff] The failures of US intelligence and the media
in the run-up to the Iraq War,
changed the way that Americans looked at its government and its media,
and who it trusted as voices.
[man ]Do you even know what we're talking about, man?
You read a report four years ago and you think you know what happened.
[Graff] 9/11, in some ways, was the original modern conspiracy theory.
The Homeland Security money that flowed out in billions of dollars
in grants, to local and state law enforcement militarizing them,
in many ways brought that own war home.
This is one of the two or three dates in American history
that has changed all of the rest of American history.
[no audible dialogue]
[Hoffman] Sadly, I think that if Osama bin Laden were alive today,
he’d be a happy man, or at least he’d be contented.
The enterprise that he commenced in 1988
has survived for more than three decades.
It has challenged the most technologically advanced military
in the history of mankind, the United States.
On 9/11 there was one al-Qaeda.
Today there’s four times as many foreign terrorists organizations
on the State Department's list, that share al-Qaeda's ideology.
That still regard bin Laden as their hero, as their mentor,
as the person they aspire to emulate.
The phrase "The War on Terror,"
I think, was an enormously compelling summons to battle,
but it was enormously misleading.
It should have been a war on terrorism
because then it would’ve been focused on the group,
on the individuals who had caused the 9/11 attacks
and were continuing to threaten us.
Once it became a war on terror, it became anything that scared us.
[Allen] I’m not gonna try to justify the trillion dollars of investment,
or try to explain all of the individual pieces
that has gone into 20 years of war.
But today, more than 40% of schoolchildren in Afghanistan are women.
The numbers of Afghan children who die in childbirth is reduced dramatically.
The access to medical care has been vastly expanded
to Afghans across the country.
The opportunities for Afghans to have a credible education…
not just at the elementary school level,
but secondary school and at the university level,
is expanded around the country.
[no audible dialogue]
So there will be some that will say it was not worth it.
But when you see the young Afghan women going off to school,
or you see Afghan women who are executives,
or you see aspects of the Afghan economy which are growing into competitiveness
with other elements within the developing or the developed world…
uh…
I would say that there has been progress.
[chanting in call and response]
[dramatic music plays]
[woman] It’s important to learn your history.
It’s important to know the full scope of what led to 9/11…
9/11 itself, the aftermath.
It’s important to know the good, the bad, the ugly, the real.
[mournful music plays]
[Bouchat] After September 11th, if you would've asked me, "How are you?"
I would've said, "I'm fine. I'm alive. I'm okay."
I did not realize I was not okay.
I was a functioning, uh, zombie.
When I really understood it, was in 2006.
That's when the tribute museum opened.
That's when I really understood I needed to tell the story.
I needed to talk about the people we lost, about the events.
And I needed to share that.
[Berkman] I hope what we don’t forget about 9/11
is how our country tried to come together on 9/11,
to help each other.
This was before we decided we were gonna retaliate,
or take action against whoever was responsible.
We have so many lessons we can learn from 9/11,
but we should not think that hate…
is ever a good response.
That-- It’s only love.
That’s it.
[Frederick] Every 9/11 anniversary, it's like it’s fresh all over again.
You don’t forget. You never forget. And I never will.
It’s just something that sticks with you like glue.
You never, never forget.
But my real joy of all this is that I was able to meet Leigh and Faye.
[indistinct chatter]
You know, my whole life changed after meeting them,
knowing that they were alive and well.
We kept in touch with each other after that, and they became my family.
Which is beautiful.
And to this day, Faye is my mom from Chicago.
[laughs]
I really-- She’s such a beautiful person, you know?
[military tattoo]
[marching band playing bagpipes]
[woman 1] Andrew Anthony Abate.
Vincent Paul Abate.
[man 1] Laurence Christopher Abel.
[man 2] Alona Abraham.
[woman 2] William F. Abrahamson.
[man 3] Richard Anthony Aceto.
[man 4] Heinrich Bernhard Ackermann.
[woman 3] Paul Acquaviva.
[man 5] Christian Adams.
[somber piano rendition of "America The Beautiful" plays]
[Rauf] America at its best
is an America that believes in equality for all.
In Islam…
one of God’s 99 names is As-Salam…
which means "peace."
"Peace" is actually one of God's names.
What greater ambition can a human being have in life…
than bringing about a real, lasting, permanent peace?
[mellow piano music plays]
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